HC tells Centre to decide petitioners’ representation

MP high court on Thursday directed the petitioners to submit a representation to the Central government over extending services of chief secretary R Parasuram for six months.

The chief secretary was granted extension of services from April 1, 2013 to September 31, 2013. He attained superannuation on March 30, 2013.

Ajay Dubey, an RTI activist, and Arun Gurtoo, ex-DGP and ex-vice chancellor, filed a PIL challenging extension of services granted to the chief secretary. The PIL said the chief minister while recommending for the same to the prime minister did not assign any reason for granting service extension as per provisions of All India Services Rules 1958. There was no role of the chief minister to directly write to the prime minister to extend the services of IAS officer against the laid down administrative procedure, the petitioners’ counsel Rajesh Chand said.

A division bench comprising Justice NK Mody and Justice UC Maheshwari further directed the Centre to decide the representation of the petitioners and dispose of the PIL. Additional advocate general PK Kaurav argued the state government has powers as per rules to propose for extension of services of IAS officers. Kaurav said the petitioners did not make any representation before the Central government in this matter so the petition is not maintainable and there is delay in filing the petition.

The petitioners said chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan in his letter of December 27, 2012 to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recommended extending services of the chief secretary for his service record was clean. However, this was not incorrect, they claimed.

The chief minister took the ground Parasuram served as chief secretary with distinction and had only eleven months of tenure as CS and grant of extension of six months will allow the state government to utilize his services both in policy making and implementation.

One of the petitioners, Ajay Dubey, made a complaint to the Economic Offences Wing about how the chief secretary during his tenure as principal secretary in the Panchayat and Rural development cum member secretary of MP State Employment Guarantee Council favoured allocation of Rs 30 lakh contract to the Mahila Chetna Manch, an NGO run by his predecessor Nirmala Buch.